Games Played

Ville Awards

It seems the Ville has recently shut down its remaining TF2 servers, marking the end of an era. The game has been the centerpiece of the Ville for the better part of the last decade, but even though Valve continues to ship small patches here and there and promise bigger things that may never materialize, there's no denying that TF2 is quickly fading into obscurity as its obsolete engine shows its age and it faces stiff competition from its modern descendants, especially Overwatch. I thought this might be fun opportunity to look back at TF2's incredible 10-year (!) history.

TF2's actual 10th birthday will be this August. It was first launched as part of the Orange Box, as was Portal, with which it therefore shares an anniversary.

Do you remember when you first picked up TF2? How about which big update was your first? I started playing shortly after A Heavy Update in 2008, and began playing regularly on the Ville not long after, especially TV8 Warpath. Those were good times...

Games Played

Ville Awards

I first played TF2 on the day The Orange Box came out. My first map was 2Fort. The first character I created was an Engineer, and I set up my SG and equipment in the intel room, where I defended while listening to the chatter and trying desperately to figure out what was going on. I'm pleased to report my gun got 3 kills, and was never destroyed, probably because most other people were just as big newbies as I was.

I then didn't play TF2 for a bit, because I was more interested in The Orange Box's HL2 content, and in Portal. I finished up those games over the next couple weeks, then came back to give TF2 more of a try. I first connected to The Ville on TV6, Dustbowl, a month or two after TF2 released, probably around October or November, 2007. It was part 2 of the map, and I was on offense. I believe I went Pyro, though that was a very different experience in those days, when fire was still the pyro's primary weapon. I played various servers at first, with whatever had an open space, but I kept coming back to TV6 because the community was much nicer than others, and I had consistently good ping. I fell in with a group of troublemakers, without realizing we were troublemakers, and was basically "saved" from them the day before many of the others were banned. I had a bug up my butt about it for a little while, but Beeron drew me to the website community and I came to understand exactly what was going on, and how truly cool The Ville and Villuns in general were.